Consider the following moments of Donald J. Trump’s political career:
On November 2, 2015, on an episode of Fox Sports’s The Herd with Colin Cowherd, Trump insults presidential primary opponents Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio as, respectively, a “low-energy individual” and a “lightweight.”
On January 6, 2021, Trump speaks at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., proclaiming – in the face of his lost election “stolen by the fake news media” – that “We will never give up. We will never concede.”
On May 30, 2024, Trump decries his 34 convictions as “a disgrace,” and the result of “a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt.”
On July 13, 2024, Trump survives an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, immediately thereafter standing up to pose for unplanned photographs, with blood dripping down his face and fist in the air.
Now consider Trump more than 15 years ago, on April 1, 2007. On television Trump is seen physically attacking his personal friend, then-CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Vince McMahon, during the televised Battle of the Billionaires, before Trump and wrestler Bobby Lashley shave McMahon’s hair in the ring.
What does Trump’s participation in the wrestling ring have to do with his politics? Throughout his presidential campaigns, Trump’s political style has drawn from his almost 30 years of work with WWE, the media company responsible for most of North America’s televised professional wrestling spectacle. Though each has a subtly different take on the matter, journalists and academics have argued that Trump’s politics, perhaps even his successful presidential run, are indebted to the theatrics of WWE, including journalist Judd Legum, performance theorist Sharon Mazer, political and media scholar Shannon Bow O’Brien, and political scientist David S. Moon.
I agree with these commenters that considering Trump’s relationship to professional wrestling allows us to understand the connection between his political style and his political successes. However, I go further by suggesting we must consider his theatrics – indeed inspired by wrestling – from a perspective also empowered by the study of religion.
American Professional Wrestling: A Fiction
For the uninitiated: American professional wrestling is not actually sporting competition. It is instead elaborately staged, fictional performance crafted and televised by writers, actors, producers, and crew. Its matches’ results are decided in advance. According to historian Scott Beekman, the history of professional wrestling can be traced to 19th-century travelling carnivals and con-artistry, for which fixed matches were much more convenient to perform than spontaneous, unscripted fights. It was not until 1989, though, that the WWE (then known as the World Wrestling Federation, WWF) admitted its fights were staged.
This is not to say professional wrestling is unathletic. While acting, the performers engage in mock fights, including elaborate physical stunts. Major figures from the WWE who went on to become mainstream celebrities – often actors in action films – include Dave Bautista, John Cena, Hulk Hogan, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Jesse Ventura. Trump, inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013, was primarily involved as a host but was central to WWE’s narratives, in which he portrayed a version of himself.
Though among such performers, Trump has attained the highest political office, other professional wrestlers foreshadowed his political ascent, accompanied it, or may follow Trump’s precedent. For example, Ventura became governor of Minnesota from 1999 until 2003; Hogan spoke at this year’s Republican National Convention, and even earned a blown kiss from Trump himself; and Johnson claims to have been considered for a presidential run.
Kayfabe: A Fiction That Pretends Not to be Fiction
Central to researchers’ interest in the intersection of Trump’s politics and professional wrestling is how Trump uses conventions specific to this type of theater. Perhaps of most significance is kayfabe, the performance style associated with professional wrestling. According to philosopher Lisa Jones, the “fundamental conceit of the kayfabe is the pretence that the in-ring and back-stage performances are genuine, that they are legitimate feuds and wrestled fights, when in fact they are a matter of fictive performance” (278).
This is in contradistinction to the modus operandi of most filmic, television, and theatrical performances. In most theater, actors on stage do not aim to convince the audience that the events depicted before them are genuinely occurring. Accordingly, the audience neither believes, nor acts as though they believe, that the events are genuinely occurring. (If they did, any performance of violence on stage would likely result in cries of terror, or even the authorities being called.) In film and television – perhaps more noticeable in classic movies than today’s – actors, directors, and the production team do not frame events as properly realistic, but rather with a distance aimed to provoke the audience to a desired emotional and intellectual response. In short, most such performances are fictions that never endeavor to pretend to be non-fiction.
But in kayfabe theatrics such as those of professional wrestling, actors and audience work together, much like in make-believe, to generate a sense of unstaged authenticity. Wrestlers maintain their characters off stage; moreover, the audience waves signs, cheers, and often acts surprised to learn the outcome of a match. In this way, wrestlers – who are performers, actors – pretend their fiction is non-fiction. Put differently: Part of the fiction of kayfabe is that the fiction is not fiction. Unlike many other media, kayfabe is fictionally non-fiction.
Arguably, genres of performance other than professional wrestling deploy kayfabe as well, to various purposes and with varying degrees of consistency. For example, in ‘found footage’ films such as The Blair Witch Project (1999), the movie’s framing device, acting, and writing push the audience to respond as though the events depicted might be real. Suit performers at theme parks such as Disney World may similarly urge children to engage with characters in a way that imaginatively bridges animated fictional worlds and the concreteness of encountering an actor in elaborate makeup or a larger-than-life costume. Moreover, many competitive reality television series – including Trump’s work on The Apprentice – encourage both actors and the audience to engage with planned performances (which may indeed include improvisation and some events that surprise the performers) as though they contain strictly genuine, unedited real-life competitions and corresponding displays of emotion. Finally, we might even ask whether some forms or religious ritual deploy elements of kayfabe to engender certain responses among clergy, other ritual practitioners, and laity. Some accounts of ritual, including those of Catherine Bell and Ronald L. Grimes, might be amenable to locating elements of kayfabe within ritual performance.
To recapitulate: In kayfabe, the production is acted and staged in a way that pretends to be unstaged and unscripted; the audience – even though most know the events are staged – also engages with these staged events as though they were genuine. In the next post, I’ll examine the political implications of Trump’s use of kayfabe techniques.
